Topic: WorldNetDaily
A Dec. 15 WorldNetDaily article, published along with last week's bogus birther presser, touts "10 experts and analysts who doubt Obama's birth certificate," declaring:
Is President Obama’s White House-released birth certificate really just a forgery and one of the biggest frauds perpetrated on the American people?
At least 10 researchers, analysts and document experts have questioned the validity of the birth certificate Obama released online in 2011.
but a closer look at these "experts and analysts" reveals a much different story -- one that WND doesn't want to tell.
First up is Ron Polland, who WND claims is "known for his forensic investigation of Obama’s short-form birth certificate, constructed from scratch a duplicate of the document released by the White House, seeking to validate his contention that it was created by a forger." It goes on to claim that "Polland demonstrated that during the 2008 presidential election race, the Obama campaign posted an image of a short-form Obama Certification of Live Birth that actually was a forgery created by Polland, not a scan of an original certificate obtained from the Hawaii Department of Health.
In fact, as Dr. Conspiracy documents, it's far from clear that the Obama campaign ever posted Polland's fake document, and Polland never offered definitive proof of it. As far as Polland's "forensic investigation of Obama’s short-form birth certificate" -- done under the pseudonym "Polarik" -- that investigation was definitively discredited.
Next up is Mara Zebest, "a nationally recognized computer expert who served as contributing author and technical editor for more than 100 books on Adobe and Microsoft software." As we noted when WND dragged her along for its birther lawsuit dog-and-pony show in 2011, we could find no documented expertise in PDF files or the Adobe Acrobat software used to create them (though she claimed she had some). She also claimed that the long-form Obama birth certificate was created in Adobe Photoshop, even though the document's properties show it was created in a different program.
Then there's this guy:
WND reported when Ivan Zatkovich, of Tampa-based eComp Consultants, analyzed the analyzed the various layers in the PDF file released by the White House, and concluded: “The content clearly indicates that the document was knowingly and explicitly edited and modified before it was placed on the web.”
Zatkovich later told Dr. Conspiracy that WND's report on his findings was cherry-picked for the most damning evidence, and that he actually concluded that "All of the modifications to the PDF document that can be identified are consistent with someone enhancing the legibility of the document." WND also wouldn't publish the full report Zatkovich provided to WND, presumably for those reasons.
And another old friend pops up:
As WND reported, Hawaii elections clerk Tim Adams signed an affidavit swearing he was told by his supervisors in Hawaii that no long-form, hospital-generated birth certificate existed for Obama in Hawaii and that neither Queens Medical Center nor Kapi’olani Medical Center in Honolulu had any record of Obama having been born in their medical facilities.
As we documented, Adams first started making his claims on a white nationalist radio show, and Adams was never in any top-level election position while in Hawaii -- his boss confirmed he was a temp, a low-level data-entry clerk. And that affidavit? It was proffered by WND itself; Adams confirmed that "someone associated with WorldNetDaily" drew it up and had him sign it.
WND rattles through a few more so-called "experts" like Doug Vogt, Karl Denninger, Tom Harrison, Israel Hanukoglu and Paul Irey. Needless to say, WND has censored any mention of the evidence that discredits these "experts."
The article is padded out with Joe Arpaio and posse leader Mike Zullo.
In short: They aren't "experts," they're conspiracy-mongers, and WND has once again tried to give them credibility they haven't earned and don't deserve.
Despite publishing all these birther conspiracies, WND continues to whine about being labeled as a purveyor of fake news. Funny, that.
